Did years of environmental neglect contribute to the floods ravaging Eastern and Central Europe?

About half the population of Europe lives along rivers, but suddenly water was the bane of the Continent. Fed by torrential rains, floods from the Black Sea to the Baltic took roughly 100 lives, left thousands homeless and caused billions of dollars' worth of damage to the farms, cities and hamlets of Central and Eastern Europe. Prague looked like a city under siege. Military rescue vehicles rumbled down the Czech capital's flooded streets, in which soldiers, firemen and volunteers labored to rescue stranded citizens and keep the Vltava River, which winds through the city, from destroying architectural treasures. They succeeded, but...